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St Giles,
Houghton St Giles

Houghton
St Giles is an utterly lovely, tiny village on
the outskirts of Little Walsingham. When people
talk about 'Walsingham', they usually mean this
place as well. Here, Norfolk is hilly; the
vigorous River Stiffkey cuts through the vale,
and the houses and parish church of Houghton St
Giles, or 'Houghton-in-the-Dale' as it is
sometimes known, flank the top road. This parish
has thousands of visitors every weekend in
summer, pilgrims drawn here by one of the
touchstones of English Christianity. However, it
is not to the Anglican parish church that they
come, but to the Catholic National Shrine of Our
Lady, just across the river from St Giles. The
great 1982 Church of the Reconciliation sits
barn-like in the vale, the 14th century slipper
chapel and the other shrine buildings beside it.

Inevitably,
some pilgrims cross the forded river to visit St Giles, a
witness to the 'glory that was once theirs'. Imagine what
it must be like for some of these pilgrims when they
visit this beautiful village for the first time. Arriving
after a long coach journey along motorways from bleak
post-industrial inner city parishes in Middlesbrough,
Glasgow or Liverpool, they step out into a gently rolling
landscape of high-hedged fields and lanes, of bubbling
brooks and ancient buildings, of birdsong and clear
sunlight. Perhaps it is like a vision of heaven. They
must often think about it afterwards, daydreaming of this
remote place and imagining their return.

St Giles
sits on the road from Fakenham to Walsingham. Half a mile
or so earlier, travellers will have passed the lovely
ramshackle church of All Saints East Barsham, perhaps not
even noticing it, its low tower surrounded by trees. St
Giles is quite different. This is a neat, shipshape
building, thoroughly done up in the 19th century by
enthusiastic Victorians. It sits at a right-angle to the
road, its rather stark lines ameliorated by a raised bed
of 18th and early 19th century gravestones to the
south-east.

You enter
into what is essentially a 19th century interior,
retaining some of the survivals of its medieval life. The
best and most interesting of these is the 15th century
roodscreen. Norfolk has no shortage of roodscreens, but
no other is quite like Houghton's. On the north side is a
sequence of Holy Kinship - the only other in Norfolk is
on one of the side screens at Ranworth. Each panel
depicts one of the women associated with Christ and the
Disciples, although the first panel has never been
satisfactorily identified. The inscription says Scta Anna
- but this is not St Anne. We'll come back to it in a
moment. Meanwhile, the others show, from left to right,
St Mary Salome with the infant St James and St John, the
Blessed Virgin and Christ child, St Mary Cleophas with
four infants who appear intended as St Simon, St Jude, St
Philip and St James the Less, St Elizabeth with the
infant St John the Baptist, and finally St Anne teaching
the Blessed Virgin to read. So, who does the fourth panel
depict? MR James suggests St Emeria, the sister of St
Anne and mother of St Elizabeth. However, as the child
appears to be a boy he may be St Servatius, held to be
her ancestor. No other explanation seems more likely, but
still...

on the
south side, the figures are more familiar. The four Latin
Doctors, Saints Gregory, Jerome, Augustine and Ambrose,
are commonly found in Norfolk. The last two are St
Silvester and St Clement. Silvester appears to have the
donor of the screen kneeling at his feet.

Unsurprisingly,
given our location, there is much evidence here of 20th
century Anglo-catholic enthusiasm, including a fine
mosaic icon and a truly grim statue, both of St Giles.
However, the most poignant survival is from the 19th
century, and sits in a side window of the chancel. It
depicts Christ as the Good Shepherd, carrying a lamb in a
familiar, formulaic pose - there is an identical image
across the county at Alburgh. However, it is the
inscription which intrigues. In Memory of Dec 30 1876,
it reads. He shall gather the lambs in his arm. And
that is all - no names, no other details. The obvious
deduction is that the window commemorates the death or
loss of a child, or children. The incident was obviously
well-known enough to require no further explanation, but
here we are 130 years on, and it is lost to us. What can
have happened on that midwinter night, out here in this
wild and remote vale? Was the snow deep on the ground,
and the temperature descending towards freezing? Was the
River Stiffkey in full spate? I have pondered and
investigated this window for more than ten years, but I
have never been able to find a satisfactory answer.

The east
window of the chancel is a curiosity for a different
reason. It depicts the Crucifixion, with Mary and John
flanking the cross. And yet it is in a style unlike any I
have seen elsewhere, and Mary in particular seems to have
been rendered deliberately ugly, as if this was some old
Dutch Master at work rather than the late 19th century
glass which it appears to be.

There
is much to wonder at here, from the screen, to
the Crucifixion, to that extraordinary memorial
window. And something else to think about: when
Tom and I came this way in August 2007, we found
the church locked. This was something I had not
encountered in perhaps a dozen previous visits,
and a locked church is almost unheard of in this
part of Norfolk. The reason, it turned out, was
that every year in mid-August, Travellers and
Gypsies descend on Walsingham to celebrate the
Feast of the Assumption. They are Catholics, of
course, and will be processing to attend Mass at
the modern church on the other side of the river.
But I couldn't help thinking what this told us
about the local parish's attitude to outsiders,
if it locks its church rather than allowing them
access to a sense of the ancient, numinous and
divine, to the Glory that once was theirs as
well.